HUM 333B - Voices and Visions of Democracy: Experiences of New World Democracy

Institution:

Antioch University-Los Angeles

Subject:

Description:

This class introduces students to essential texts that mark issues and stages in the evolution of American democracy and shed light on ongoing political and ideological struggles in local and transnational spheres. The colonial conquest of the "new world," as Europeans understood it, had various motives and manyconsequences. The best and the worst come to light as students explore three enduring struggles for freedom on American soil, particularly from an oratorical perspective. One struggle is that of Africans enslaved and brought to the United States, and their often mixed-race children. Phillis Wheatly, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass are examples of extraordinary "slaves" who unmasked thehypocrisy of a slave-holding, "Christian," and "democratic nation." TDeclaration of Independence of 1776 and speeches by Abraham Lincoln frame the poems and slave-narratives and shed light on the founding flaws, from which the United States is still recovering. From this perspective, too, students review aspects of American Indian history, myths and poems framed by the eye-witness account of genocide by Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). Shakespeare's The Tempest (viewed as a film) and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels provide appraisals Old World assumptions about class, race, and gender in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A third focus of the class is the women's suffrage movement in the United States, pioneered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, lasting till 1920. These three strands interweave as the class takes stock of the Civil Rights Movement's legacy in other liberation struggles that are ongoing. Students evaluate the power of the spoken as well as the written word in creating uniquely "American" values and responsibilities. HUMANITIES DOMAIN

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.antiochla.edu

Phone Number:

(310) 578-1080

Regional Accreditation:

Western Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Quarter

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